Traditional video game play has been typically viewed as an individual experience in which game players may immerse themselves interactively against the characters, scenery, and challenges presented by the game itself. Interactive play with real people opponents and teammates occurs within the boundaries of one's living room or immediate environment from where game players may share the same physical game system and accessories needed to play with each other.
Although with traditional offline games, playing with real people is limited by one's physical environment and game system, indirect interaction about the game does occur within a larger social and cultural setting outside the immediate context of game play. Just as people discuss the latest episode of ER or news and magazine article headlines, game players discuss and share the challenges and enjoyment that they experience while playing a game. Moreover, although game players may not be directly competing with each other physically, they may do so indirectly by sharing, discussing, and bragging about their achievements after playing alone.
Another aspect of traditional video game play is the ability of game players to save the state of their game on a memory card or hard drive of the game system on which they are playing. Specifically, game players may save the objects, weapons, characters, and components that one has collected, the location, level, or stage that one has achieved, and the total points, health, or ranking that one has acquired during the course of a game or set of successive game plays. The ability and desire of game players to save the state of their games is indicative of an inherent value system placed upon the components, actions, and accomplishments achieved during game play.
This value system may be subjective to an individual's own time investment and interests with a game, but, may also be relatively compared to the overall time investment and interests of the larger game community of players who have achieved the same or similar achievements by playing the same game. When considering the value of the different aspects of game state and game achievements within the larger context of a gaming community of players, the context and interactivity of a video game begins to transcend the physical boundaries of the game itself into a social, cultural, and economic discourse and exchange of similar interests and experiences.
A business aspect of traditional offline video games is that game publishers generate revenues through the unit sales of games on the wholesale market. As the video games must be manufactured onto CDs or DVDs and packaged and distributed physically by distributors and retailers, the mark-up of a game by the time it reaches the end consumer usually is twice the amount of the wholesale price. Moreover, the physical distribution requirements of an offline game limits game production and development to a holistic approach whereby game characters, levels, actions, components, and “bug” fixes must be introduced according to one overall release schedule.
With the development of the Internet and online games, video game players may play against and with each other directly and are no longer bounded by the physical constraints of their location or game system. For example, game players playing on a personal computer with access to the Internet may race each other when playing a race car game or team up with each other when playing a role playing fantasy game. All players in this scenario may be located in different locations so long as their personal computer is running the same version of the game being played and is connected to the Internet.
What is most compelling about online games is that the social, cultural, and economic interaction that typically occur outside the immediate context of a traditional offline game may now occur within the game itself thereby becoming part of the overall gaming experience. Specifically the game components, levels, and achievements of a player may now be directly discussed, traded, advertised, sold, and purchased as part of the game itself according to the larger marketplace dynamics of the overall value system of the larger online gaming community.
Lastly with online games, the possibility for game publishers to forego the manufacturing and distribution costs of releasing a physical CD exists. Using the Internet as a distribution mechanism, game publishers may sell and distribute their games to consumers directly. Moreover, the flexibility of online distribution also allows game publishers to release games in a more granular fashion thereby staging their overall release schedules into several mini releases and/or more finely pricing game characters, levels, actions and components into individual product offerings or groupings.